Kirk Mahoney . com

I saw this in an email message.

Problem:
The apostrophe is in the wrong position.

Explanation:
The complete sentence was (quote) “I hope to see ya’ll next year.” (unquote).

A Texan wrote the email message, and I recognized what the writer intended to say.

But “ya’ll” — spelled Y-A-APOSTROPHE-L-L — is not the correct way to write the contraction for the way that Texans say “you all”, the informal plural of the pronoun “you” in some parts of the United States.

An apostrophe in a contraction indicates where letters have been removed.

No letters have been removed between the “a” and the first “l” in the word “all”.

So the apostrophe does not belong after the “a”.

Instead, the apostrophe belongs where the letters “o” and “u” have been removed from the word “you” in the forming of the contraction.

Solution:
“y’all”

My wife spotted this on an envelope.

Problem:
The contraction is missing an apostrophe.

Explanation:
(Quote) “WERE MOVING OR HAVE MOVED!” (unquote) was stamped in red beneath a business’s old address in the return-address section of an envelope.

The business obviously had a lot of envelopes that had been printed with its old address in the return-address section, and beneath that section the business had stamped a new message in red to let envelope recipients know one of the following:

• The business was in the process of moving.
• The business had already moved.

The new address appeared — also in red — beneath (quote) “WERE MOVING OR HAVE MOVED!” (unquote), so that envelope recipients would have the new address of the business.

The problem with the red-stamp headline is that it is missing an apostrophe.

When one creates a contraction — in this case from the pronoun “WE” plus the verb “ARE” — an apostrophe must be included to indicate the letter or letters that one has removed to create the contraction.

I believe that the omission of the apostrophe is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis. It is simpler to omit an apostrophe than to include one.

Solution:
“WE’RE MOVING OR HAVE MOVED!”

I saw this on a van yesterday morning.

Problem:
The apostrophe was in the wrong place, if the “Til’” — spelled T-I-L-APOSTROPHE — was meant to be a contraction for “Until”.

Explanation:
“Excelsior Learning Academy” appeared at the top of the sign on the van.

“Open Til’ Midnight” — with the apostrophe appearing after T-I-L — appeared immediately beneath the academy’s name on the sign.

Cross-referencing the telephone number, the multiply-named company actually seems to be a child-care center.

Discovering that Excelsior Learning Academy was essentially a child-care center answered my first question when I saw the sign: “Why would a ‘learning academy’ stay open that late?”

Perhaps this also explained the misplacement of the apostrophe for the omitted portion of the preposition “Until” when this so-called “learning academy” ordered a sign with a contraction for “Until”.

One might argue that Excelsior was creating a contraction of the preposition “Till” — spelled T-I-L-L — by dropping the final “l” and replacing it with an apostrophe, but I would counter-argue (1) that Excelsior and its sign maker probably were not that smart and (2) that it is a waste of an apostrophe to use it as a substitute for the similarly slim letter “l”.

Solution:
“Open ‘Til Midnight” or “Open Until Midnight”

I saw this the other day at the Gizmo5 website.

Problem:
A pronoun appeared where a contraction should have appeared.

Explanation:
The full sentence on one of the pages at Gizmo5.com was (quote) “If you can’t find the answer your looking for here please contact us and we’ll be glad to fill in the details.” (unquote).

Beyond the comma that was missing after the word “here”, the bigger problem was that the author of this sentence used the pronoun “your” where the word “you’re” — a contraction for “you are” — should have appeared.

As I have written in at least one other blog post, many speakers of American English tend to make the common English blunder of pronouncing “your” and “you’re” in the same way, even though these two words have different pronunciations.

I believe that these mispronunciations drive what some would call misspellings — writing “your” where “you’re” is required, and vice-versa.

Solution:
“If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for …”

I saw this today in an online news article about the recent launch of the Sprint XOHM service in Baltimore, Maryland.

Problem:
An apostrophe is missing.

Explanation:
The complete sentence was (quote) You can attach one of four service plans to your XOHM devices: The “home” plan works with the home modem, for $35 a month (its on sale through December 31st for $25), the “On the go” plan is for the ExpressCard, at $45 a month ($30 on sale.), and “Pick 2″ lets you get two devices (a modem and a card, for instance) for $65 a month ($50 on sale). (unquote).

The word “its” — spelled I-T-S — is a possessive pronoun.

The article writer is trying to say that the home-plan service is on sale through December 31, 2008, with “it” substituting for the name of this service.

In other words, the expression should have been written with the contraction form of “it is” in (quote) “… it is on sale …” (unquote).

Solution:
“… it’s on sale …”

Many people do not realize that these two words originally were contractions.

The word “phone” — spelled P-H-O-N-E — originally was ‘phone — spelled APOSTROPHE-P-H-O-N-E — which is a contraction of the noun telephone, with the apostrophe signifying the omission of the first four letters (T-E-L-E).

The word “blog” — spelled B-L-O-G — originally was ‘blog — spelled APOSTROPHE-B-L-O-G — which is a contraction of the compound noun Weblog, with the apostrophe signifying the omission of the first two letters (W-E).

I believe that writing ‘phone with the initial apostrophe fell out of favor because it is simpler to omit the apostrophe than to include it. Omission of this apostrophe is consistent with my “Devolution toward Simpler” linguistic hypothesis.

I believe that writing ‘blog with the initial apostrophe had almost no chance of success because apostrophes are not legal characters in a uniform resource locator or URL, whereas many authors — including yours truly — like to put the word “blog” in the URLs for their Weblogs.

The result is that both “phone” and “blog” — neither of which have an initial apostrophe — have become accepted words in American English.

My wife got this in an email message recently.

Problem:
The word “you’re” is incorrect here.

Explanation:
The complete sentence in the message was (quote) “Please contact me and if you’re school is near by, I may be able to deliver them to you.” (unquote).

The word “you’re” — spelled Y-O-U-APOSTROPHE-R-E — is a contraction of (quote) “you are” (unquote).

Clearly, the message writer did not intend to say (quote) “… and if you are school is near by, …” (unquote); that would be nonsensical.

Instead, the writer was referring to the reader’s school, so he should have used the possessive pronoun “your” — spelled Y-O-U-R.

I believe that the common English blunder of confusing the contraction “you’re” with the possessive pronoun “your” is due to the fact that many American English speakers mistakenly pronounce these two words in the same way.

Solution:
“… and if your school is near by, …”

I heard this last evening during the HGTV television program “The Stagers”.

Problem:
A past-tense verb appears where the verb’s past participle is required.

Explanation:
The person who said this was referring to the colors in the fabric of a sofa.

The verb “is” — hidden within the contraction “There’s” — must be combined with a past participle of the verb “weave”.

Here are some examples of the verb “is” combined with past participles of verbs:

• There is a piece taken from the pie.
• There is a pink color painted on the wall.
• The quarterback is hereby cut from the team.

The first example uses “taken” — the past participle of “taken”.

The second example uses “painted” — the past participle of “paint”.

The third example uses “cut” — the past participle of “cut”.

The past participle of “weave” is “woven”, not “weaved”, which is the past tense of “weave”.

For fun, I searched Google for each of the following combinations (with the quotation marks) and got about the indicated numbers of matches:

• “is woven” — 1,230,000 matches
• “is weaved” — 47,400 matches

This tells me that Web authors favor (quote) “is woven” (unquote) over (quote) “is weaved” (unquote) by a 25.9:1, which is good but not great.

Solution:
“There’s some slate gray woven in to the sofa.”

I saw this on a blog yesterday.

Problem:
A contraction appears where a pronoun is required.

Explanation:
The full sentence was something like, “I work with a guy who’s service goes down every day for an hour and a half.”

The writer used W-H-O-apostrophe-S, which is a contraction of the word “who” plus the word “is”.

What he should have put was the pronoun “whose” — spelled W-H-O-S-E — which is the possessive case of the pronoun “who” — just as “his” is the possessive case of the pronoun “he”.

Solution:
“… a guy whose service goes down every day …”

I saw this in an email message.

Problem:
The contraction is improperly formed.

Explanation:
I saw “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader” on television last evening. A question was under the category of first-graded grammar, and it asked for the number of contractions in a particular sentence. The contestant — a working adult — got the answer wrong because, as he admitted, he did not know what a contraction was.

Sad!

Today, I saw an email message in which the contraction for (quote) “you all” (unquote) — an American colloquial form of the plural second-person pronoun — was spelled Y-A-APOSTROPHE-A-L-L.

A contraction is correctly formed by replacing one or more letters with an apostrophe, not by replacing one or more letters with one or more other letters and an apostrophe.

The contraction of “you all” is spelled Y-APOSTROPHE-A-L-L.

Solution:
“If y’all could lay out…”